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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

I've been following your discussion and I am sure it applies to me. However, for some reason, in ALSAMixerGUI, the IEC958 Optical Raw slider and the SB Live Analog Digital Output Jack slider are both not operational. I have no idea why.

Here is the story. I setup both Xine and MPlayer the same way with the same results. I already had "hw:0,2" in all of the possible slots in Xine, but I had "5.1" as the speaker arrangement. I changed the speaker arrangement to "Pass Through". In MPlayer I left the alsa device as "defualt", and changed the codec to "AC3/DTS pass-through S/PDIF". The results were no audio at all with smooth video.

Then I checked the alamixer and found the IEC958 switch on. I muted it (i.e., alsamixer displayed "Item: IEC958 [Off]" in the upper portion). I tried Xine again, and I got one small blip out of the speakers (the sound is not intelligible). However, when I went back to alsamixer, the IEC958 was back on! Everytime I try to play a DVD it gets forced back on?!? Not sure what is going on there.

It looks like everything is setup properly, but it just won't pass-through for some reason. I still don't have an optical cable, but I am going to get one tomorrow and see if that does anything. Thanks for the help, any other thoughts as to what is going on. It sure seems like everything should work.

this is exactly the same behaviour than on my system. Everytime you start playing something the switch is set to on. Just try to keep xine or mplayer running and switch IEC958 to off (while playing). This should do.

I like mplayer bacause of its relatively meaningful debug output.
I mplayer does not report any error and play video well than the IEC958 switch should be the only problem.

As I mentioned above, there should be a fix using the hooks plugin, but Ineed some help or a lot of time to figure out how to use it. So for now I am used to the habit to switch it off manually.

Your problem seems much different since your Board is different. I have no clue from your output what could be wrong, but it looks like your soundcard has no digital out, or more likely the kernel module for that is not setup/loaded.

Regarding your file format, just try a different wav file or record one with arecord first.

I have already tried turning IEC958 off while the video was playing, but it did not help. Also, I was reading the MPlayer documentation online and I changed your command line a bit. I used "-afm hwac3" since it works with both DTS and AC3 file formats (the movies I am trying to play have both types of sound tracks). I also added "-channels 6" after "dvd://1" to force 5.1 sound. Here is a sample output when I tried to play "Pirates of the Caribbean" DVD (the results were identical for the "Braveheart" DVD):

Failed to open /dev/rtc: Permission denied (it should be readable by the user.)
Opening joystick device /dev/input/js0
Can't open joystick device /dev/input/js0: No such file or directory
Can't init input joystick
Setting up LIRC support...
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: Connection refused
Failed to open LIRC support.
You will not be able to use your remote control.

The video worked great, but still no audio. It appears as if MPlayer is sending the audio signal, but the signal is not being received by the Cambridge SoundWorks DTT3500 decoder?!? Also, it appears that the alsa driver is using 4 channels, or maybe only 2 channels. What do all of the items on the "alsa:" and "AO:" line mean? Thanks again for the help, I am one step closer. Now I just have to figure out where the audio signal is going. Any thoughts?

Chris

PS - I looked at the back of my motherboard and in the manual, and there is not an optical output anywhere. I am not sure what the additional subdevice is in the "aplay -l" output, since there is no optical output (i.e., the motherboard only has only one S/PDIF out, the coaxial).

First, thanks for your help! It turns out that the digital signal was there all along. I needed to select a button on my Cambridge SoundWorks DTT3500 Digital decoder (under "Dolby Pro Logic" -> "Digtial In"). It is a funny story actually, I pressed the "Digital In" button on the off chance it might work, and then the basic SUSE operating sounds starting coming out of all of the speakers! I had never heard that before, so I decide to try the movies, but still no sound. So, I switched from "Pass Through" to "5.1" in the "Speaker Arrangement" in Xine and it worked great. Then I went back into MPlayer and used the "AC3 decoding with liba52" option instead of "AC3/DTS pass-through S/PDIF", and MPlayer worked great as well.

Then I started alsamixer, and checked the IEC958 option. It is still ON when the audio works in both Xine and MPlayer. It appears the coded AC3/DTS signal is either not being transmitted properly, or being blocked by the IEC958. However, the software decoding is working perfect so I am not concerned.

This is the first time I have gotten digital sound out of my nForce 2/SoundStorm chipset without the nVIDIA drivers. Thanks again for all your help! I am going to reference another guy I was working with to this thread. Cheers, and maybe I will post with you again sometime!

In my case I still have no sound. The HWINFO is below. I had tried playing with amarok or the test sound in control center, but no feedback except the cpu applet showing "action". I tried your suggestion of aplay:

Everything seems to work. mpg123 counts frames and hwinfo --sound resports IRQ 185 events count up, but...still no sound (speakers on, volume up, mixer to full, IEC958 off. This is the listing of hwinfo --sound with mpg123 playing, but if done with amarok, the mp3 song finishes immediately, there is no frame count or graphic equalizer movement as in the frame count in mpg123. Alsaconf was run after booting, but the "Little Endian" test.wav did not produce a sound, but it took its seconds to play and IRQ events counted up. I've tried the same above with modprobing as instructed by "Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe snd-via82xx" below, without success.

Hello Chris,
I recently upgraded to 10.1 (installed from scratch due to HD crash) as well but the setup remained the same.

I copied the old /etc/asound.conf onto the new system and all run well the
/etc/modprobe.d/sound was created by yast using autodetect and setup. No manual tweaking.

You seem to have the same basic setup as me, but this doesn't work for me. Here's what's funny...the following /etc/asound.conf works for me, except that it obviously doesn't use dmix, so only one program can use my analog and digital outputs at once (one program for each, that is):

pcm.!default { type plug slave {pcm "iec958" rate 48000}}

So all I want is to to have the same functionality now, where the SPDIF is the default for most things, but I can tell certain programs to use my analog (mainly VoIP apps, cause my headset is plugged into the analog) -- and I want more than one program to be able to make sound at once, so that while I'm listening to music, for instance, Gaim can still make the sound that tells me I have a new message.